Found this story on Fox Sports. Reason Teddy backflipped in signing for Raiders and possible reason why left tigers afterwards as unpaid TPA. My question is if this is reported that the club was chasing money for him to stay which is openly admitted wouldn't that be a breach asking for a TPA to entice a player.
Tigers insider reveals staggering call to let Teddy walk, and the man Wests Tigers sponsor, businessman and fan has lifted the lid on his relationship with the club in relation to the botched retention of James Tedesco and how they eyed Karmichael Hunt and Michael Gordon as replacements.
Adrian Tripodina appeared on the Wests Life podcast in an episode entitled ‘My dealings with Wests Tigers management’ where he explained how he became involved in the club.
It was during May 2014 when Tedesco had penned a deal with the Raiders but eager to stop the talented junior leaving the club, Tripodina picked up the phone to the club.
“I’d never called the club before but I called them up and was like ‘hey I’m in property and I know there is a thing called cooling off periods in contracts.
“Just wondering if there is any chance of meeting to see if there’s any chance of changing James’ mind.
“It might have been someone under (former CEO) Grant (Mayer).
“I went and had a coffee with those guys and said ‘look, is there a chance of keeping James, is there a cooling-off period?’. They said it was short about $50,000 a year.
“The club said he’s gone and they were looking at Karmichael Hunt (as a replacement for Tedesco). I told them there was ‘no chance’.
“I get a call back two weeks later, it was Grant he said: ‘James is staying, he’s announcing it in an hour, can you get us the money?’
“I said my leverage was going to be going around people I knew and saying we need to keep him and in order to keep him we need to raise this money.
“If you’re telling me he’s going to announce, then you’re asking people to put money in, they’ll all say I love the club but he’s already staying.”
Tedesco eventually stayed at the Tigers, but not for much longer.
When that time came around, Mayer had left the club to be replaced by current CEO Justin Pascoe.
The CEO, however, said that they didn’t need to worry about losing the fullback who has gone on to captain the Chooks, the NSW Blues and play for Australia.
“We were heavily invested in James Tedesco at the time,” Bechara said.
“If you remember the comparison he made between James Tedesco and an ageing Michael Gordon, and how we could get Michael Gordon for a certain percentage of his price.
“And (Pascoe was saying) yeah, he’ll do the job and all these things, and if our feet could have reached each other we’d have been kicking each other.
“I could see the look on your face like does Justin Pascoe really know what he’s talking about?”
Pascoe was approached for comment but declined to make any formal comment.
Replies
Who cares, it’s not as if the Tigers have won premierships or kept other teams from making the finals.
I think what saves the Tigers here is that Adrian contacted the Tigers first. He initiated the deal, not the other way around.
This is why clubs are supposed to be at arms length from TPAs
Where tye Storm went wrong they had a separate contract which had the club guarantee the TPAs which is illegal
The better clubs like Roosters have rock solid TPAs which player agents come to expect will be full filled every time hence why they can effectively have a significantly larger cap..... it helps being connected to the big end of town and not "Joe's Tyre Centre"
The salary cap never worked and will never work. It's an impossible process to police. There is a solution: a points system like shares.
Players are assigned a points score out of a possible 100. 50% of the points are comprised of stats related to their position. 25% rep honours and 25% a mark from an independent board of former players. If you want you could include a reduction in points for local players or long serving players. All players points scores a published publicly on NRL website.
Each team has a maximum amount of points in its first grade squad. Player payment is whatever, it's not a factor.
you wouldn't need salary cap auditors or anything. Us fans could see if a team was over its points.
The NRLW has something similar, but it's based on their representative appearances which is really where the value of a player is. It's objective. Every club gets a total number of points, they can't pass that. Players are assigned a number of points based on their number of rep appearances and the year of those appearances. So a 2021 Origin player has more points than a 2018 Origin player.
Sounds like a hellva improvement to me. Why doesn't the NRL have the same or similar?
Well, you can't have it in the NRL now as it would require a redistribution of players and nullification of contracts and the players and clubs certainly aren't going to agree to that.
The powers that be instituted a salary cap in the late 80s and we can't undo it now. Perhaps the last chance to redesign the system was the Super League war when everything was up in the air, but it's too late now.
The system was introduced to the NRLW so as the game expands, players earnings aren't capped. They're having problems with a salary cap now in the AFLW.
100% it's a breach & should be investigated regardless of who approached who the club must not be in direct contact with TPA
Not necessarily. A TPA cannot be funded by an individual or entity that does business with the club. If Adrian Tripodina - who by his own admission - simply called up the club in the capacity of a "fan" - was able to source funds from his Tigers supporting contacts in the business community, and present that money to the club, it is the very definition of a TPA.
Where it would be problematic is if those donors then expected the player to endorse their products or services. At that point, the money would have to be included in the cap.
For example, that Tradie deodorant ad with the Storm players? If those players got paid for that ad, those payments would need to be included in the cap.
Correct me if my memory isn't correct but wasn't the money Hindmarsh made from his book counted towards the Eels salary cap? If this is correct it would be interesting to find out if the money Munster, Addo Carr, Welsh, Brandon Smith and the like are getting for their stupid underwear ads are being counted towards the Storms salary cap?????